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Award-winning whisky merchant Royal Mile Whiskies opened the first Drinkmonger in Pitlochry in July 2011, offering the largest range of wine, whisky, spirits and craft ales in the Highlands. A second branch of Drinkmonger opened in Bruntsfield, Edinburgh in October 2011 with an even more extensive range of fine alcohols, quickly establishing itself as the best place in Edinburgh to buy Scottish gin, and speciality beers from around the globe. With a cracking Fine Wine room through the back, we had a place to host our thriving program of wine and spirit tastings.

This website is the on-line expression of this Drinkmonger project, and we hope to present to you a bewildering array of booze from around the world, but to guide you through it in a way that is easy to understand and without snobbery. Whether it is the ferment or distillate of grain, fruit, cactus or cane, there is always a new culture of alcohol from some corner of the world to discover.

The range and layout in our shops reflect our attitude to helping customers learn about and find the right drink. We have over 1000 wines from 100 different grape varieties, spread fairly evenly between New World and Old World. We arrange this by grape variety rather than region, as the grape is great starting place to understand flavour. You'll find New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc next to Sancerre from the Loire and the great Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre blends from the Rhone rub shoulders with Australian Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro, and Garnacha from Spain.

Our approach to spirits is the same: what is made from, how is it made, and therefore what is it likely to taste like? You may already know our Royal Mile Whiskies' staff, and their enthusiasm for this wonderful drink has taught them that it is skill and good materials that make great whisky, whether single malt from Scotland or Pot Still Whiskey from Ireland, Bourbon or Rye from America or single grain whisky from Japan. So Balvenie is next to Yamazaki. Similarly, we think the starting point for Cognac, Armagnac, Pisco and Grappa is that they are distilled grape spirits, just as Calvados is the spirit of apples, and Tequila is made from a cactus. Traditionally, alcohol retail websites began with wine and whisky, and everything else was lumped into Other Spirits. We are started Drinkmonger with a blank page and decided that this old way is wrong, and a little disrespectful to Absinthe, Cachaca, Mezcal, Pineau des Charentes and all the delightful but less famous drinks we have fallen in love with. We sincerely hope you enjoy having a look around Drinkmonger.com and find your new favourite drink